Category Archives: Contract
Nancy Kim, ‘Consent and Dispute Resolution Clauses’
ABSTRACT Dispute resolution provisions are routinely found in the boilerplate section of all types of contracts, ranging from negotiated paper agreements to website Terms of Service. The law permits the parties to a contract to change the default rules that would otherwise govern their transaction, including how any disputes will be resolved. The ability of […]
‘Damages, Doctrine, and the Remedial Life of Forum Selection Clauses’
John Coyle and Tanya Monestier, ‘Limits on Damages for Breach of a Forum Selection Clause’ (25 September 25, 2025), available at SSRN. Forum selection clauses are so familiar that they rarely invite fresh questions. Courts mostly enforce them after lawyers litigate motions to dismiss or transfer, and the parties move on. One remedial question, however, […]
Dagan and Heller, ‘The Autonomy Default Paradigm in Contract Law’
ABSTRACT You can scribble an agreement on a napkin or hire lawyers to negotiate a hundred-page contract. Either way, most of your contractual obligations will not be in your document. They will be in the background rules contract law applies absent your express agreement. Justifying these defaults is a core task of contract theory; getting […]
Andrea Boyack, ‘Modern Consumer Contracting and Online Terms’
ABSTRACT Company-crafted terms and conditions that supposedly govern modern consumer transactions are more lengthy, complex, and ubiquitous than ever before. Proliferation of online terms has been accompanied by increased judicial willingness to deem a contract duly formed based on passive and unknowing indicia of assent. Today’s consumer contracts are presumptively synonymous with a company’s online […]
Ezra Wasserman Mitchell, ‘The Relational Foundations of Contractual Obligation’
ABSTRACT American contract law treats relational autonomy as prior to assent. Contractual obligation becomes intelligible only when the parties’ interaction preserves relational adequacy, meaning each has a meaningful capacity to refuse and a meaningful capacity to participate in shaping the terms. When that relational structure is present, courts enforce agreements across wide inequalities and hard […]
Caro, Gillis and Nelson, ‘Differential validity in fair lending’
ABSTRACT Fair lending’s disparate impact doctrine aims to address lending disparities. But which disparities? Traditional fair lending has narrowly focused on equal outcomes – examining differences in loan approval rates or interest rates. However, this singular focus overlooks other dimensions of disparities that are essential for fair credit access. This article challenges the conventional emphasis […]
Xiaoshui Zhai, ‘Autonomous systems: how should contract law treat such autonomy?’
ABSTRACT Autonomous systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly used in automated contracting. Unlike traditional computer programs, autonomous systems are capable of independently formulating and executing contractual decisions based on environmental inputs, without direct human intervention. Their growing use raises important questions regarding the adaptability of existing contract law. This paper examines three key […]
Custers, Lahmann and Scott, ‘From liability gaps to liability overlaps: shared responsibilities and fiduciary duties in AI and other complex technologies’
ABSTRACT Complex technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) can cause harm, raising the question of who is liable for the harm caused. Research has identified multiple liability gaps (ie, unsatisfactory outcomes when applying existing liability rules) in legal frameworks. In this paper, the concepts of shared responsibilities and fiduciary duties are explored as avenues to […]
Sarah Dadush, ‘Shared Responsibility In American Contract Law’
ABSTRACT At first, the notion that there is such a thing as shared responsibility in American contract law may sound fanciful, if not absurd. A key reason why parties contract in the first place is to allocate risks and responsibilities between them to clarify who must do what to move the collaboration forward. As such, […]
Georgios Stathis and others, ‘Towards a Foundation for Intelligent Contracts’
ABSTRACT This article investigates the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within LegalTech. We define an ontology to form the basis for Trustworthy AI processing of contract automation. The value of our research is that it applies an ontology, as existing tool, in contract automation. Two perspectives are emphasized: communications analysis and risk analysis. They are […]